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I've never tried just putting the favicon in the root folder but not linking to it. Is that effective in all (major) browsers? I'm intrigued now so I will have to play with it.

I didn't try to experiment with it. However, on all my test sites, I just put the favicon in the root. Being lazy, never got around to putting any favicon links on the pages. The favicon just came up. IE, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and Safari - all under Win 7. Can't speak for any other browsers or OS's. But it's a good indication.

Originally Posted by Beverleyh

The root folder/directory of a website is the main folder - the one where you'd put the home (index) page.

That's right. Doesn't work on the local hard drive, but the eqivalent would be putting it in the C:\ folder.

Another way of looking at it is, if you have as your domain:

http://www.domain.com/

The place to put it is:

http://www.domain.com/favicon.ico

The only time you need a favicon link tag on the page, at least as far as I know, is when your live web space isn't a domain unto itself. Like I have:

http://home.comcast.net/~jscheuer1/

I put a lot of stuff up there to show people things. But it's not its own domain, so - if I want a favicon, I have to put a favicon link on the page.

I didn't try to experiment with it. However, on all my test sites, I just put the favicon in the root. Being lazy, never got around to putting any favicon links on the pages. The favicon just came up. IE, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and Safari - all under Win 7. Can't speak for any other browsers or OS's. But it's a good indication.

It will automatically be detected, but that can take up to something like 72 hours for all browsers (especially IE, from what I've heard) to catch up. If you include it in the HTML (I usually just put it in my index page, or main template, but not necessarily everywhere) that will help it to go faster. I'm not sure if it helps beyond that one page, but either way it'll catch up in a couple days. I think that's usually a conservative estimate as well.

if i just put the icon into the root folder and don't link to it nothing happens at all. do i have to give it a speciall name or something else???

It will not be immediate. It must be named favicon.ico, and it must be in the root folder. That's all. It will eventually start to appear. It can take up to 72 hours (at the longest, I've heard that for Internet Explorer), but usually will be much faster than that. I'd say start by waiting 12 hours (maybe just 1 or 2) and see if it appears anywhere. It probably will. And soon it'll appear almost everywhere (that is, for all browsers, on all devices). A couple (IE?) might take a little longer, up to 72 hours.
(Really, I think the 72 hours is for others to see it. You can force the browsers to find it faster by clearing the cache and resetting some other things I think, but I'm not positive. It might take up to 72 hours if you do nothing at all, and that's for, I believe, all visitors to your website.)

now my homepage has the style i want. i just have to do some fine tuning and to fill in some content.
i wrote everything in a simple html editor (phase 5.6). today somebody told me it would be easier to create
the homepage with a content managment system (CMS). he showed me then his (sold) homepage
with the cms and thats pretty awesome! so the questions are:

is it easy to convert my existing homepage to a cms? whats the best cms freeware? how does it work? do i need
to a webserver in the first, or can i write it all on my pc and then put it online?

...for info: my existing homepage is just made out of some pictures, links, texts and the javascript placed with a
normal CSS style sheet.

Wordpress is probably the easiest (and it's very popular). For something a little more customizable, you might consider Joomla or others. There are a lot of free options.

If you're looking for something very easy, you could also use BeverleyH's "Fast Edit", which is fast to use but doesn't allow complete control over the layout if that's necessary for you.

And finally you can create something yourself with a language like PHP and a database (such as MySQL). Probably not needed, but certainly possible.

You need a server; you can configure your computer as a server, but not just by saving a .html (or .php) page-- you'll need to install server software (such as WAMP) and then run it from http://localhost/, or something along those lines.
Additionally, whether you use your own computer or another server, if you do decide to ever move servers, it is possible that the code will not function in exactly the same way. It's usually possible to fix it, but with server-side code it's a lot like Javascript varying by browser-- it can behave differently on different servers. It's just usually not a problem because we rarely change servers. But when we do, it can take a little adjusting. And of course you'll need to move everything along with it such as your database in addition to your files. (And don't forget about making all of the links point to the new host!)

A nice little alternative to WAMP is Server2Go - a portable server that you can carry round on a memory stick: http://www.server2go-web.de/download/download.html
I just use the smallest download (the 30MB zip) to make use of the php capabilities while I'm on the move, but it also comes in handy for distributing a finished php website to clients as it can run quickly from a CD. Download, unzip and drop your php website/pages into the "htdocs" folder, then start Server2Go.exe and browse to your website/page at: "http://127.0.0.1:4001/my-web-page.php".

If you wanted to have a little play with "Fast Edit" (shameless plug) right on your computer, you would just unzip that to the "htdocs" folder of Server2Go (or the specified folder for your chosen server installation), start up the Server2Go.exe and browse to the demo at: "http://127.0.0.1:4001/".

If you're looking for something very easy, you could also use BeverleyH's "Fast Edit", which is fast to use but doesn't allow complete control over the layout if that's necessary for you.

Not for the end-user, but the designer/developer would have complete control over layout during setup

The idea behind Fast Edit was to provide "safe" editing for clients where they can only edit content inside of a predefined text file. This way, they wouldn't be able to destroy the website layout/template that the designer/developer had created/built. The editable area ideally would just be a content div, but you *could* make the whole body (the part of a web page between <body> and </body>) editable if for example you were making a website for yourself and needed a bit more freedom. There's an optional template manager where the end-user can edit CSS on the fly so in this sense it *can* allow more control over the layout, but you get to decide how much

Fast Edit comes in a few versions - and their downloads/usage are all totally FREE;

Fast Edit Mini (and Micro) just allows simple edits to the pages that you've made editable. This could be all the pages on a website or just a "Lastest News" page for example - demo: http://fast-edit.co.uk/demo_mini/

Fast Edit v1 is more like a traditional CMS and allows page edits, optional file manager (uploads), optional CSS editor and the ability to add and delete pages and set custom menu text - demo: http://fast-edit.co.uk/demo1/ You can also set it to run in basic mode which makes it behave more like Fast Edit Mini.

The demos/downloads come with a visible login icon in the top right corner but you can remove this and use a backend login system instead - info on how to do that is here in the very first question: http://fast-edit.co.uk/questions_and_answers.php

writing a homepage is harder then i thought. so let me put it together in steps:

0. creating a homepage with the style i want
1. installing a local server
2. installing a cms on that server
3. wedding of cms and own homepage
4. paying a real server and puting it all online
5. drink whisky after work is done

by the way: step 5. is optional and can be repeated after every step

as you said, i want to have an easy cms which doesn't give the end-user full control.
it should be as simple as possible. the end-user should be only allowed to chance some
texts and maybe some pictures of the javascript.

I dont know about Pulse as I havent used it, but Fast Edit is very easy to setup/use and it sounds like it would be appropriate for your particular website. You would need to test it to make sure though.

I havent come across a CMS where you can drop existing web pages into a folder and it will just work automatically - That would be very clever - Most require some configuration and initial setup to make them work. Most of the time you have to work within the boundaries of a CMS's own particular folder structure, which could mean moving all of your website template images/js/css into the folders where the CMS wants them to be, rather than where you orriginally put them. That's why its usually easier to source a CMS before you begin building a website, particularly on larger sites. BUT, if you have a small website with only a handful of pages, it's not much hassle to integrate a CMS afterwards - I imagine that this is where you are, so you're actually in a better position than most.

Feel free to test Fast Edit - read the installation instructions and examine the contents of the files and the folder structure. Hopefully you'll be able to see how the pieces fit together. If I just explain that with php you can seperate off common blocks of code and "include" them back in all your website pages with the php include() command, that should help you understand how Fast Edit works.

To explain a little better, imagine that your web pages are like official letters from your bank, where the header (eg. a logo, company name and address) at the top, and footer (eg. disclaimers and contact details) at the bottom, always stay the same, but the bit in the middle changes. In this example there would be 3 php files that make up the the whole php web page - a header file, and footer file and a content file. With the help of the include() command, a web browser knits all of the files together so it just looks like a normal/complete web page, but in the background, there are actually 3 pieces, and of these 3 pieces, the same header and footer files can be used on every web page of a website, while the middle content piece changes on every page. This makes php includes brilliant for standardising the look of a website, and it also makes template changes really easy as you only need to edit one file for every page to pick up the change.

Anyway, let's first get your local server setup - download and install a server tool so you can utilise the power of php. For now, download Server2Go and unzip it to your desktop: http://www.server2go-web.de/download/download.html Get the 30MB zip for now.

Next download and unzip the contents of the main Fast Edit folder to the "htdocs" folder inside of Server2Go (you can delete any files that are already in "htdocs"): http://fast-edit.co.uk/
Make sure that Fast Edit's index.php page (and all of it's other pages/folders with the same folder structure), are directly inside of the htdocs folder. Fast Edit should not be inside another sub-folder.

Then go to the "fast_edit/fast_edit_config.php" file and edit the $siteurl variable to match your website. While you're testing in Server2Go, the value for that line would be " $siteurl = 'http://127.0.0.1:4001/'; "

After that, just click on the Server2Go.exe icon and everything should just work. If your default web browser is IE and you notice that Server2Go keeps shutting down, you can force Server2Go to open in Firefox instead in its "pms_config.ini" file (which is in the same folder as the Server2Go.exe) - look for this line "BrowserType=IEXPLORER" and change it to "BrowserType=FIREFOX". You'll need to download and install Firefox if you don't already have it on your computer.

That's it. You can then edit the "includes/header.html" and "includes/footer.html" files to contain your own website design and change various settings/passwords in the "fast_edit/fast_edit_config.php" file.
There are more detailed installation instructions on the website and there is also a Q&A page that may help answer any other questions you might have. You can always email me too.

I'm sure you have a lot of info to absorb, and you must have other CMS tools to test so I'll leave it with you for now... BTW, you most definitely deserve a glass of whisky after this learning curve.

ok, now i understand the structure of a cms. so a cms has to be faster than a normal homepage because most of the pictures which aren't changed are in a "global catch". when i am on the first page
of the homepage and go to a subfolder the page doesn't need to be loaded completely, instead it just loads the files which are changed. am i right? sounds good!

you are right...my homepage is very small by now and i only have one basic style which is changed minimally on the other pages (other background picture, other link pictures, and of corse other texts).

one last question: the most pictures i have on my own, but sometimes i need a speciall picture like a pen or an old book for instance. do you know a good homepage which ofers free picture downloads with a big pool of pictures. the pages i found have only a little picture pool.